When The OC was cancelled earlier this year, there was a brief moment when it seemed inept, melodramatic and overwritten shows about high school would go the way of its former leading-lady Marissa: dead. And like that anorexic, alcoholic and sexually confused teen, preferably tossed over a cliff, never seen nor heard from again.
Alas, as much as I would relish a prime time schedule without 20-somethings pretending to be depressed and ugly 16-year-olds ' network executives can't let them go. It's easy to understand why: What else would draw the youth market more than a completely false and pretentious recreation of that childhood no one actually had?
Well, nothing yet, and that's why those shows keep coming.
More than any other genre of television show, the high school program (HSP) misses reality. Unlike most other types of shows, however, nearly every person working on the script, directors and actors went to high school and should remember what it was truly like. OK, maybe not the child actors, who can't read but can down Martinis at age 14.
The most notable exception is Freaks and Geeks, which was painfully, awkwardly accurate and lost mainstream viewers for the same reason.
The list of HSP offenders is long, and it gets a little longer every year. It stretches back to shows like Welcome Back, Kotter and reached into the '90s with the abundance of premarital sex and perfect looks of the 90210 crowd.
But the cause of all this was not John Travolta's bad acting before he was a bad actor, or Shannon Doherty's uncontrollable desire to destroy everything and everyone.
No. Saved by the Bell ruined America.
Did I just say America? I meant to say TV shows about high school. That Principal Belding just infuriates me.
The downfall began in 1989, when a TV show about a group of diverse students became a Saturday-morning phenomenon. Since then, Dawson Leery and Michael Kelso have driven the possibility of a new type of show, with a hint of creativity, into the ground. The OC was the culmination of sensationalized tales of high school woe. The show started as Great Expectations brought to you by Prada, but became Days of Our Lives sponsored by Grey Goose.
Even the shows that were once funny ' That '70s Show ' decided that the kids should move on and grow up. They became college students and parents and, generally, uninteresting. It seems the worst thing a HSP can do is try to grow up.
Until high school is replaced by a kind environment of teaching and learning, writers won't be able to stay away ' which means that the cycle of melodrama will go on and on, like an episode of My So Called Life.
I blame everything on Zack Morris' cell phone.
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Justin Thompson
High school melodramas miss reality
